nest

Unblogged September

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A depiction of the Cheshire cat on the roof of Trinity Leeds

Considering that I still haven’t written about everything we did in July and August (there’s one more blog post to follow on Thursday), then surely there’s lots more to come from what we did in September. Right?

Well, we did do quite a few things this month, but not all of them merited blogging about on their own. Diamond Geezer normally writes a summary of unblogged things each month (here’s his from August) and whilst I won’t be writing a day-by-day summary, here are some of the things we did:

Trips to Manchester

I went to Manchester twice this month. The first was for a birthday meal for Christine, and also a shopping trip. We naturally went to Afflecks, which is an indoor market focussed on alternative lifestyles and has many small businesses selling clothes, jewellery and music. It’s in an old department store which closed in the 1970s after being taken over by Debenhams (who already had a larger store nearby). It’s operated in its current format since 1982, and is a very quirky place.

My second trip was for work, attending a training session about international qualifications delivered by UK ENIC. That was held at the University of Manchester.

Trip to Leeds

We also had a shopping trip to Leeds, which also doubled up as a second birthday meal for Christine, this time with my parents. This was at Bibi’s Italianissimo, which is a huge art deco restaurant near the station. Bibi’s has been in Leeds for years and retains a reasonably good reputation for food and hospitality – especially for families.

We also went into the Corn Exchange, which is similar in some respects to Afflecks in Manchester as it’s also home to many smaller shops – a couple of which are also in Afflecks. Architecturally, the Corn Exchange is far more interesting, being as it is circular with a huge glass domed roof over the central atrium inside. It’s unsurprisingly Grade I listed.

Back to school

Our nine-year-old is back at school, and started year five – their penultimate year at primary school. Next year, we’ll need to start looking at secondary schools.

Getting cold

This time of year is when we see how long we can hold out before turning the heating on. Which turned out to be Tuesday 16th September, after a run of cold days. It warmed up again afterwards, and so the thermostat didn’t come on until it turned cold again last weekend. Normally, the heating stays on until early May.

Speaking of heating, I’ve had major issues with my Nest thermostat recently with it refusing to work with either the Google Home app or Home Assistant. Ultimately, I had to completely remove it from both, and then re-add it, to get it working again. Which is a faff because the Nest integration in Home Assistant is one of the most difficult to set up, and it’s actually gotten worse since last time as you now have to create a Pub/Sub topic too. I’m pleased that it’s working again, but you can tell Google are phasing out their Nest thermostats in Europe. It will certainly get replaced with a different system, as and when we’re ready to replace our gas boiler with a heat pump.

No more Google Nest themostats in Europe

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A photo of our Nest thermostat with the heating set to 19 C

I’m a little bit late on this, as the news came out a couple of weeks ago. Google is dropping support for its oldest Nest thermostats, and will stop selling the newest models in Europe, once its stock is depleted.

This is relevant for me as we had a Nest thermostat installed nine years ago. Now, as far as I can tell, it’s not one of the models that’s being dropped. However, Google and Nest haven’t made it massively straightforward to check.

There is a ‘How to tell which Nest thermostat you have’ help page, but the information is different depending on where you are. Compare and contrast the UK and US versions:

The reason for the discrepancy, and the given reason for withdrawing the product altogether from Europe, is that:

“Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes”

However, when I’ve looked, I appear to have a third generation thermostat, but a second generation heat link. The heat link is the rounded-square white box that is wired up to your boiler. I’m hopeful, therefore, that I do indeed have a third generation thermostat. I haven’t had an email about it yet, that’s for sure.

If it does transpire that I have an older thermostat, then it’ll only work locally. That means that it’ll still control the boiler using the schedule set up on it, but users won’t be able to use either the Nest or Google Home apps to control their thermostat. And features like Home/Away assist will also stop working. In tandem with this, the old Nest app is being retired altogether, with all functionality moved to the Google Home app.

I assume that this will also apply to anything that uses Google’s APIs, so users won’t be able to use Home Assistant as a workaround, for example. The change takes place on the 25th October this year.

Compensation

As well as notifying affected users by email, Google is offering money off its newer thermostats for those who want to upgrade and keep their smart features. Of course, as Google is withdrawing its thermostats from Europe, European users are instead offered 50% off a smart thermostat from Tado, which costs €199 normally. The same kit is currently £149 from Amazon (sponsored link) but I’m guessing the discount code will only work for direct orders. Tado smart thermostats will work with Google Home, and with Home Assistant, but they’re still cloud-based like Nest’s thermostats are.

And this is the concern I have. I’ve trusted Nest, and later Google, to provide a cloud service, which they’re now taking away for some users. Whilst this (probably) doesn’t affect me now, further changes in a couple of years could mean that my thermostat becomes unsupported as well. And if Tado decides to do the same with their thermostats, users could be inconvenienced twice.

Google has been killing off a number of its smart devices recently. In March, the Google Nest Protect was discontinued (I also have one of those), and I’ve recently blogged about the removal of Google Assistant from Fitbit devices. And it’s not like Google hasn’t got form when it comes to killing off products. Killed by Google lists almost 300, and it actually hasn’t been updated in a few months. Indeed, I’m still bitter that Google Reader was killed off 12 years ago.

Finding alternatives

I think what’s worse about Google killing off its older thermostats is that they’re not so easy to replace. A thermostat needs to be professionally installed. It’s not like a phone, or a smoke alarm, or a smart speaker, where the old one can simply be unplugged and replaced. And they’re not cheap – I paid £250 for my Nest thermostat back in 2016. Even with the discounts, you would still have to find someone to install it for you.

In time, we’ll be replacing our gas boiler with a heat pump, and when that happens, I’ll look to replace to Nest thermostat with something else. It won’t be Tado, as outlined above. At the moment, I’m leaning towards Drayton Wiser. It works with both gas boilers and heat pumps, and supports smart thermostatic radiator valves. It can also work locally – indeed, the Home Assistant integration (installable via HACS) doesn’t require the cloud at all. Others who I’ve talked to in smart home communities recommend it, but I haven’t experienced it myself.

I suppose, knowing Google’s history, that I should have been more wary about relying on Google hardware for my heating.

Nest Protect Review

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A photo of the Nest Protect smart smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector

Back in January, we bought a Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm (Amazon link). Like other Nest products, it’s a smart, ‘internet of things’ device, so it does a bit more than your regular cheap alarm.

For me, its two best features are:

  • Push notifications to your phone when the batteries need changing, rather than random chirping at 2am
  • Being able to cancel an alarm if you’re accidentally burnt your sausages but have the situation under control

Set-up is easy; it’s done through the Nest mobile app before you attach the alarm to the wall or ceilling. We went for the battery-operated model, but you can also buy a mains-connected device if you have the relevant wiring in place.

The Next Protect has a small motion sensor (like the Nest Learning Thermostat). If it’s in a dark room and detects motion, it’ll briefly illuminate with a white light. The light will also glow red, yellow or green depending on whether it has detected any issues.

There’s also a small speaker and a microphone. As well as an alarm tone, the Nest Protect will talk to you to tell you that it has detected smoke or carbon monoxide. The microphone is for self-testing; periodically, the Nest Protect will have a ‘drill’ to ensure that it’s working correctly.

Nest products work together, and as we have a Nest Learning Thermostat, the Nest Protect will tell the thermostat to turn off our central heating boiler if it detects carbon monoxide.

Before buying the Nest Protect, I considered the Roost smart battery. Roost works with your existing smoke alarm, but adds some of the smart features. Unfortunately, as it’s slightly larger than a standard 9-volt battery, it doesn’t work with all smoke alarms.

The other factor that convinced me to buy the Nest Protect was an offer that was running at the time: free delivery and a free Google Home Mini. I’ll be reviewing the latter in another blog post.

Nesting

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A photo of our Nest thermostat with the heating set to 19 C

Along with our new boiler, we also got a new thermostat – a Nest Learning Thermostat. I’d actually bought it in January, in the hope that it could be fitted to our existing 1970s central heating system. With both Christine and I being on maternity and paternity leave respectively, we were at home most of the day and so the heating was on almost constantly – I hoped that a better thermostat would cut the amount of energy required. Alas, the fitter who came to install it told us that our system was too old – he could fit it, but it would only power either the hot water or the heating, and not both at the same time.

Now that we have a more modern boiler, we could also make use of the new thermostat.

The previous thermostat also dated from the 1970s and was a basic model that, theoretically, would heat the house until it reached the set temperature and stop. But I’m convinced that it didn’t do the latter – the heating would still be on even when it was utterly roasting. With such an old system, the fault could have been in any one of several places. Either way, it’s not an issue now.

Whereas the old thermostat was upstairs, we’ve fitted the Nest in the dining room. You can install it using the standard thermostat cables to your boiler, or there’s a micro-USB socket and an AC adaptor included. We decided to go for the latter, in case we want to move it somewhere else. It’s quite easy to fit to the wall and the backplate even includes a spirit level to help you align it correctly.

The Nest offers several useful features:

  • It learns how long your heating system takes to warm up. So if you want the house to be warm by 7:30am, you tell it that, rather than telling it to come on at 7am in the hope that your house will be warm enough by then.
  • You can tell the thermostat that you are away, allowing it to maintain the house at a cooler temperature, thus saving energy.
  • Your thermostat can be managed using official apps for smartphones or tablets, or on the web.
  • It has a motion detector, so the display turns off when no-one is about. It can also turn your heating down if it detects no motion in the house for some time.
  • Integration with IFTTT and other smart home technologies.

Whilst it’s been a warm couple of weeks, thanks to the Nest our heating has only needed to be on for an average of 30 minutes per day. I’m hoping that it will save on our energy bills – my mother-in-law has one, and she credits hers for halving her gas bill.